The Liverpool Trilogy

by Ruth Hamilton

  The lad stuffed the offending items into the hole, filled it with soil, replaced the turf, and jumped once again on the dearly un-beloved after making sure that the piece of green fitted perfectly. No hymns, no words of wisdom, no goodbye. There. The deed was done. An unsavoury memory had been put to rest, so the world of Seamus Walsh had improved. Of course, there was no marker, no monument, no floral tribute. Instead, a sweaty, pink-faced boy looked down critically at his work. He placed the spade against the wall of a little shed, glanced up and caught sight of his grandmother.

  She waved at him and put a finger to her lips, thereby indicating that his secret was safe. They both knew that he wasn’t completely out of the woods, of course. Should another wedding be planned, boys of a certain size might be sent along to try on the suit, and they’d need a shovel to get it. But Seamus had done what he’d needed to do, and the fury and hatred were buried in a shallow grave behind Maureen’s house. Maureen had trouble enough on her plate today; she and her husband would doubtless be involved in the business with Michael and Finbar, but there was also the problem with Maureen herself, who lost her rag at the drop of a hat. What a temper she had—

  ‘Hello, love.’

  Paddy jumped, a hand pressed against her chest. ‘You’ll be having me with a heart attack, creeping about like a burglar, or a prima ballerina with no shoes on.’

  ‘It’s true I’ve got no shoes on. But me tutu and me tights want a wash, so I’ve stuck to me pyjamas. And I am stuck, bloody wet through. It’s baking in here, love. This place is that hot in summer, we’re cooked to medium rare. Stick the kettle on, Pads. Me nerves feel as if they’ve been back and forth across Wally Ainsworth’s bacon slicer ever since last night. Even me eyelashes ache, and I’ve got pain in teeth I lost years back.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ She set the kettle to boil on the hob. ‘Kev, I’ve got a really bad feeling, so.’

  ‘I’ve got two,’ he replied. ‘Finbar and Michael.’

  She nodded. ‘And don’t forget the Kray twins and company limited, Dimitri Wotsisname and his Athenian dancers, to mention but a few.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ He leaned against the sink. ‘Why were you laughing a few minutes ago?’

  She told him.

  And he told her. ‘That pageboy suit’s on a half-promise to the church. You know they keep wedding stuff for poor folk who can’t afford it.’

  ‘Shotgun marriages, you mean. Don’t worry. I’ll do a Burke and Hare on the suit.’ She scalded the pot. ‘I’ll disinter it, mend it, wash it, and pass it on.’ She pondered briefly on the subject of Seamus’s older brothers. They wouldn’t have buried the suit; they would have sold it. Even at the ages of six and eight, that pair had fixed their eyes on money. They were the same today. Cash was king whatever its provenance. Perhaps they would change? Perhaps they would stay away from London. And, of course, there remained the danger that others would follow the three dead in search of the two lads. Oh, God, it didn’t bear thinking about.

  The long-married couple sat at the minute kitchen table, each with a pint pot of scalding tea. Maureen and her daughter, the newly wed Reen, had been heard to opine that Paddy and Kevin could win prizes for tea-drinking. They never touched coffee. Coffee was for folk who didn’t mind murdering their own taste buds and, since England was a free country, such odd souls were within their rights to fry their tongues with the chicory mixture that currently passed for that drink.

  ‘I wonder what’s going on?’ Kevin asked. ‘Down at Ernie’s, I mean.’

  Paddy shrugged. ‘I know this much for sure, my love. It may be roasting in this house, but my lower vertebrae are frozen solid. Can’t get a move out of them. In those very bones, I feel some bad news coming.’

  Kev delivered the opinion that his wife’s bones were behind the times by several hours, since the bad news had already arrived yesterday. ‘I’ll bet you any money poor Tom’s out of his mind next door. It’s one thing sniping during a war, another matter altogether on the streets of Bootle with a little gun pinched from your wife’s handbag. What was she thinking of, Paddy? Letting the wedding go on like that when she knew her sons were in trouble?’

  She shrugged. ‘Well, when I approached that subject, she told me to mind my own business. It is my business. Your stall, Scouse Alley and Lights keep this family going. And we could all have been killed by those London gangsters. She said she and Tom would manage without us, but I must express serious doubt. I bet you she’ll be here by nine o’clock, bless her. It isn’t every day your husband has to shoot three murderers, so I understand her lack of patience with me. I can be annoying. I even annoy myself sometimes.’

  Their second pint was taken into the living room. Paddy lit her first cigarette of the day while Kevin went to make toast. She looked round her home and wondered what these walls would say if they could speak. Martin and Jack, the two sons of whom she seldom made mention, had lived here for a while with their sister, Maureen. Maureen was now next door. The lads had been reasonably well behaved once grown, had done well on National Service with the army, but London had beckoned, and that was that.

  Paddy remembered digging Maureen out of her little terraced house, scrabbling in dirt and bricks, fighting to save her daughter and the grandchildren from beneath rubble and dust. Safe now. Hitler had failed to destroy the family, but six members of it had brought grief to the house. Well, to this prefab and the one next door. Her spine remained frozen. The only one left was the lovely afterthought, Maureen’s Seamus. ‘Dear God, keep him safe,’ she begged under her breath. ‘Think of something else,’ she commanded. Her mind seemed to have a mind of its own, and that was silly.

  Ah yes. How proud she had been of this little place. It had a built-in cooker and a refrigerator. She could make her own ice. Shivering, she remembered a rumour about a London madman who hired himself out to the big boys. He specialized in disposal, freezing bodies of murdered folk, jointing them, and feeding the parts into some kind of crushing machine. Freezing made the whole thing less messy. After that, he gave the resulting sludge to pigs. And people ate the pigs. Cannibals by proxy. Why couldn’t she think of something halfway decent, for goodness’ sake? If her brain didn’t kick in soon, her usual quickness of thought would be no more than a pleasant memory.

  She had nice furniture, decent carpets, pretty bits and pieces bought by her husband at Christmas time and on her birthdays. The rug was Axminster, and her china cabinet displayed some handsome bits of Royal Doulton and good lead crystal. Kevin dealt in decent secondhand clothing from a stall on Paddy’s Market. He’d even invented a fold-away changing room with a cheval mirror so that prospective purchasers could try on clothes. He was a good lad. Every weekday, at lunch time, he left the stall in the hands of another trader, came down to Scouse Alley in his van, and served tea and cocoa. He ate the same stew each time with a side serving of pickled beetroot or red cabbage. She must think of the good, only of the good. Because madness lay—

  ‘Here you are, love.’ He handed her a rack of toast. ‘Best butter to put hairs on your chest.’

  She smiled at him. ‘You’re still the greatest man I know, Kevin O’Neil. You know, I was thinking. We should start doing meat and potato pies and Lancashire hotpot. Scouse every day gets a bit boring.’

  He took a sip of tea. ‘I’m the lucky one,’ he advised her. ‘I was the man who picked you up when you fell over in the street that day.’

  Paddy managed another smile. ‘Your hands were all over me.’

  Kev shrugged. ‘I’ve always believed in making the most of situations. My ma taught me that before she died, bless her. She made the most by dying. Fifteen kids? The old bastard should have been neutered. But no. He found another daft Irishwoman and remarried within months.’ The clock began the slow crawl towards seven. ‘Paddy, my darling, we know there’s trouble afoot. Neither of us has slept a wink, what with all this, plus Romeo and Juliet clarting about at the other side of a very thin wall. We have to stay calm. No matter what happens
later on, we take it square and straight, no shouting, no tears, no anger. Your brothers and our sons may be lost to us, but perhaps we can save our grandsons.’

  Paddy stared into her cup. ‘They’ve seen the big life, the clever life, Kev. They’ve also learned that the same life is of little value, because they’ll have witnessed killings and might even have performed executions.’ She raised her eyes. ‘Look at it, my love. If they stay in Liverpool, they may well form a dynasty of their own. I’d rather place them in the hands of the police than let them ruin another city.’

  Kev nodded thoughtfully. Ernie Avago was an early riser. Always up with the lark, he had a way with flowers; he also grew his own veg at the back of the house. After his first cuppa, Ernie’s primary job in decent weather was the inspection of his garden. ‘We’ll get washed and dressed, Pads. I’m not sitting here another two hours waiting for my daughter’s permission to go hither and yon. We’ll be there before madam. And I’m sending Ernie for a couple of weeks in Blackpool while we work out what’s what.’

  Paddy’s eyes widened. ‘What’s what? What about his whippet and the budgies?’

  ‘Not forgetting the ferrets.’

  Her jaw dropped. ‘That dog eats furniture. As for ferrets – no. They bite.’

  ‘Paddy!’

  ‘Oh, all right. I know he has to be safe.’ She marched off to the bathroom. The dawn chorus had pulled in all the extras, non-professionals and substitutes, and the resulting cacophony had woken love’s young dream in the back bedroom. Reen seemed to be enjoying herself, and her grandmother was pleased about that. Too many marriages failed due to mechanical difficulties, and there was no way of correcting problems by fitting a new battery or having an oil change at a garage round the corner. The human body was a mysterious article.

  There was an old woman in the mirror again. The face was pleasant enough, but lived in. Kev still loved her, and that was what mattered. He, too, bore the marks of time, yet they still clung together like children lost at sea. What if he died? She’d never cope; if she went first, he’d be completely lost. ‘Have a wash, you stupid old crone. Hang about much longer and you’ll have the cows home.’

  Back in her bedroom, Paddy closed her ears to the noise next door. She lit a night light in a blue glass container and placed it below a statue of the Immaculate Conception. ‘Intercede, Blessed Mother.’ She then recited from memory, ‘Wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, fear of the Lord.’ These gifts from the Holy Ghost arrived when a Catholic was confirmed, and Paddy needed them reinforced today. She often used the Virgin Mary as messenger; everyone listened to Mary, though Jesus had been a bit snappy with her when she’d told Him off for preaching in the temple at the age of twelve. Mind, twelve was a difficult age, and the lad had been half human after all. ‘Oh, pull yourself together, Patricia. This is going to be one very long day.’

  Kev had a shave followed by a lick and a promise. There was no point in attending to detail, since Scouse Alley wanted cleaning while half a dozen helpers peeled spuds and carrots for tomorrow. None of them knew the recipe, because Paddy had her secrets, and one of them was her scouse. She had taken the Norwegian dish and injected a bit of the Irish into it; she also used a combination of herbs known only to herself. The women of Bootle and the rest of Liverpool had tried, but no one could get the full list out of her.

  Oh, well. He would get a bath later, as a lot of dirty stuff needed shifting first. Finbar and Michael. Old Ernie Avago. Wedding wreckage. Above all, he needed to look after his own wife, because he knew she was terrified.

  They travelled in the van and left it in an alley behind Ernie’s house. It was better this way; they wanted to attract no attention during this very early morning visit. As expected by Kev, the old man was out in the relative cool of morning. He didn’t exist in a tin box that held in yesterday’s heat during summer, yesterday’s cold in winter, so he lived the more temperate and sensible life when it came to weather. Nevertheless, he always wore a hat, because the sun was not just a friend; it was also a deadly enemy. A slender whippet, older now, lay in a basket under the ferrets’ cage.

  The visitors entered the garden. The smell of roses was almost overpowering, and Ernie was deadheading some of his prize-winning bushes.

  Paddy was the first to address him. ‘Ernie? Still got the ten-gallon hat, I see. You look great, but.’

  He half closed aged eyes and peered at her. ‘Paddy? Oh, I am pleased to see you.’ He gazed over her shoulder. ‘Kev. Well, we’d have nearly a full set if the lads had stayed.’

  Paddy’s stomach lurched. ‘They’ve gone already?’

  Ernie nodded. ‘It was after two in the morning by the time they scarpered. It looked to me like the boys were waiting for the car, because though they climbed the stairs, they never went to sleep. I was restless meself, what with the heat and me not being used to visitors. At my age, you don’t need a lot of sleep. So I saw it coming with its headlights on, though they were switched off when it got here. I saw Fin and Mike jumping into it. And they were gone, just like that.’ He tried to click his fingers, remembered the arthritis and gave up.

  ‘Where?’ Kev asked. ‘Where’ve they buggered off to, Ernie? They weren’t here more than a few hours.’

  The old chap shrugged stiffly. ‘No idea. They never said nothing about it. But they spent ages writing letters. One left an envelope for his mam and dad, and the other wrote to you two. Oh, and they left me ten quid. Nice lads.’ He paused for a few seconds. ‘But what’s the matter, Kev? They were jumpy as a couple of fleas the whole day and most of the evening – couldn’t eat a crumb. Every time there was a noise in the street, they went white and sat down.’

  Kevin answered. ‘No idea what’s going on. But we need to get you somewhere safe for a couple of weeks. Blackpool, I thought. You might enjoy a fortnight on the sands.’

  Ernie laughed. ‘Look, I can’t travel – I’m an old cripple, as you can see for yourselves. Even a short journey would kill me. Neighbours do the shopping and cleaning, then me granddaughter does the laundry and the ironing, cooks some meals and washes the pots. I can’t be buggering off to Blackpool. Here’s where I have to stay, but thanks for the offer, it’s appreciated. You still living in that sardine tin?’

  ‘We are,’ the pair chorused.

  ‘Oh well. Come in for a cuppa, and read your letter. You can take your Maureen’s with you, give it to her when you get back home. Nice to have visitors.’

  Kev patted his wife’s shoulder. ‘Do you want to read it first?’

  She shook her head. ‘Together. We do this together.’

  Ernie Avago was asleep within minutes. He drank his tea, then slipped into that happy place so well deserved by those who have spent decades toiling and sweating for a pittance. A child of the Victorian era, the dock worker had to be approaching eighty. There were no budgies. Paddy gazed down at the old man. His dog was on its last legs, his birds were dead, and she had no idea about the state of the ferrets, as they were to be avoided at all costs. ‘Life gets taken away a bit at a time,’ she said, mostly to herself. ‘It’s not just the big bang at the end; it’s all the bits that drop off beforehand.’ She knew he wouldn’t replace his dog when it left him. She knew he was preparing for his own departure. ‘Cruel world,’ she muttered.

  ‘He’s Ernie Simpson,’ Kev whispered. ‘See, here it is on an envelope. All these years, and we never knew.’ The man’s bed was under the stairs, and a commode stood close by. Bless him; he was not fit to travel. ‘He has to be all right, Pads. One of the best blokes ever. I hope he just slips away when his time comes.’

  But Paddy had picked up another letter, one addressed to herself and Granda. Her hand tingled like pins and needles. It was as if the contents tried to reach her via some osmotic process, so she passed the problem to her husband. It was a problem. Bad news had travelled up her arm and into her chest. ‘Jesus mercy, Mary help,’ she mumbled. She didn’t want him to open it, but he must.

>   ‘Sit down,’ he said gravely after tearing open the envelope and reading the first couple of lines. ‘Now, I want you to try to stay calm. Sit down, Paddy,’ he said again.

  She sat. They were supposed to be doing this together, but she couldn’t quite manage to look. There was a dead weight in her stomach; this morning’s toast seemed to have turned to lead.

  Kevin reached for her hand. ‘Your brother Peter died of a heart attack,’ he said carefully. ‘But Callum was removed.’

  Paddy swallowed. ‘Removed to where?’

  Kev scanned another line. ‘Probably Epping Forest.’

  Her face blanched. ‘They were older than me,’ she whispered. ‘I was just the oldest girl. So somebody murdered my big brother? He was too old to be a real threat to anyone.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, love.’

  She closed her eyes and travelled back once more in time and space, saw Callum running through trees in the orchard back at Ganga’s house. Callum liked trees, loved to climb and hide. He was now buried under trees. There was nothing she could do but accept the news square and straight, as Kev had termed it. Then she heard an unfamiliar sound; her husband was weeping. Paddy’s eyelids raised themselves quickly. ‘Kev? Kevin?’ His head was in his hands. ‘Martin and Jack?’ she asked softly. ‘Our sons, Kevin? Are they … ?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Both of them?’

  Again, he inclined his head.

  An invisible knife pierced her abdomen. Martin was ripping his way into the world, and what a world it had been. In a cellar dwelling with a filthy, ancient midwife as sole company, Paddy had birthed her son. The almost exclusively Irish slum had teemed with unwashed bodies, wildlife and the stench of effluent. And Kevin had got them out.

  John, usually named Jack, had been born into better circumstances. Their home had become a flat in Sefton Park, a place whose non-resident owner refused to give space to Irish immigrants. So Paddy had kept her mouth shut for the most part, while Kev, a first generation Scouser born of Dublin parents, had been forced to do all the talking. And he’d worked so hard, had got them out again …